Voiced velar approximant

For the Armenian letter պ, see Pe (Armenian).

For the Cyrillic letter Ꚇ, see Abkhazian Che § Cche.

Not to be confused with Labio-velar approximant.

The voiced velar approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɰ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is M\.

Voiced velar approximant
ɰ
IPA number	154
Audio sample
source · help
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɰ
Unicode (hex)	U+0270
X-SAMPA	M\
Braille
Image

The consonant is absent in English, but may be approximated by making [ɡ] but with the tongue body lowered or [w] but with the lips apart. The voiced velar approximant can in many cases be considered the semivocalic counterpart of the close back unrounded vowel [ɯ]. ⟨ɰ⟩ and ⟨ɯ̯⟩ with the non-syllabic diacritic are used in different transcription systems to represent the same sound.

In some languages, such as Spanish, the voiced velar approximant is an allophone of /g/ – see below.

The symbol for the velar approximant originates from ⟨ɯ⟩, but with a vertical line. Compare ⟨u⟩ and ⟨ɥ⟩ for the labio-palatal approximant.

Features

Features of the voiced velar approximant:

• Its manner of articulation is approximant, which means it is produced by narrowing the vocal tract at the place of articulation, but not enough to produce a turbulent airstream. The most common type of this approximant is glide or semivowel. The term glide emphasizes the characteristic of movement (or 'glide') of [ɰ] from the [ɯ] vowel position to a following vowel position. The term semivowel emphasizes that, although the sound is vocalic in nature, it is not 'syllabic' (it does not form the nucleus of a syllable). For a description of the approximant consonant variant used e.g. in Spanish, see below.
• Its place of articulation is velar, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the soft palate.
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Aragonese[1]		caixigo	[kajˈʃiɣ̞o̞]	'oak tree'	Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; allophone of /ɡ/.
Astur-Leonese	Asturian	[example needed]			Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; allophone of /ɡ/.
	Extremaduran	[example needed]
	Leonese	[example needed]
	Mirandese	[example needed]
Catalan[2][3]		aigua	[ˈajɣ̞wə]	'water'	Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; allophone of /ɡ/.[2][3] See Catalan phonology
Cherokee		ᏩᏥ wa-tsi	[ɰad͡ʒi]	'watch'	Found only in the Western dialect. Its equivalent in other dialects is [w]. Also represented by Ꮺ, Ꮻ, Ꮼ, Ꮽ, and Ꮾ
Danish	Older speakers[4]	talg	[ˈtsʰalˀɣ̞]	'tallow'	Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding. Still used by some older speakers in high register, much more commonly than a fricative [ɣ].[4] Depending on the environment, it corresponds to [w] or [j] in young speakers of contemporary Standard Danish.[5] See Danish phonology
Dutch	Western East Flemish[6]				Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding. Corresponds to a fricative [ɣ] in other dialects.[6]
French	Belgian[7]	ara	[aɣ̞a]	'macaw'	Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding. Intervocalic, word-internal allophone of /ʀ/ for some speakers.[7] See French phonology
Galician[8]		auga	[ˈɑwɣ̞ɑ]	'water'	Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; allophone of /ɡ/.[8] See Galician phonology
Greek	Cypriot[9]	μαγαζί	[maɰaˈzi]	'shop'	Allophone of /ɣ/.
Guarani		gotyo	[ɰoˈtɨo]	'near, close to'	Contrasts with [w]
	Ñandewa Paulista-Paranaense[10]		[adʒaˈɰa]	'I cut'	Contrasts with [ɡ].[10]
Hiw		ter̄og	[təɡ͡ʟɔɣ̞]	'peace'	Contrasts with /w/ and with /ɡ͡ʟ/.[11]
Ibibio[12]		ufokọ	[úfʌ̟̀ɰɔ̞]	[translation needed]	Intervocalic allophone of /k/; may be a uvular tap [ɢ̆] instead.[12]
Icelandic		saga	[ˈs̺äːɣ̞ä]	'saga'	Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding. See Icelandic phonology
Irish		naoi	[n̪ˠɰiː]	'nine'	Occurs only between broad consonants and front vowels. See Irish phonology
Korean		의사 / uisa	[ɰisɐ]	'doctor'	Occurs only before /i/. See Korean phonology
Mwotlap		haghag	[haɣ̞haɣ̞]	'sit'	Contrasts with [w].[13]
Shipibo[14]		igi	[i̞ɣ̞i̞]	[translation needed]	Unspecified for rounding; varies between an approximant and a fricative. Allophone of /k/ in certain high-frequency morphemes.[14]
Spanish[15]		pagar	[päˈɣ̞äɾ]ⓘ	'to pay'	Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; allophone of /ɡ/.[15] See Spanish phonology
Swedish	Central Standard[16]	agronom	[äɣ̞ɾʊˈn̪oːm]	'agronomist'	Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; allophone of /ɡ/ in casual speech. See Swedish phonology
Tagalog		igriega	[iːɡɾɪˈje̞ɣ̞ɐ]	'y (letter)'	Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; intervocalic allophone of /ɡ/. See Tagalog phonology
Tiwi		ngaga	[ˈŋaɰa]	'we (inclusive)'
Vietnamese	Southern	gà	[ɣ̞a:˨˩]	'chicken'	Typical realization of /ɡɣ/ or /ɣ/ in other dialects. Variant is in complementary distribution before open vowels.

Pre-velar

Voiced pre-velar approximant
ɰ˖
j˗
ɨ̯
Audio sample
source · help
Encoding
X-SAMPA	j-

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Spanish[17]		seguir	[se̞ˈɣ̞iɾ]ⓘ	'to follow'	Approximant consonant. Lenited allophone of /ɡ/ before front vowels;[17] typically transcribed in IPA with ⟨ɣ⟩. See Spanish phonology
Turkish	Standard prescriptive[18]	düğün	[ˈd̪y̠jy̠n̪]	'marriage'	Either post-palatal or palatal; phonetic realization of /ɣ/ (also transcribed as /ɰ/) before front vowels.[18] See Turkish phonology

Voiced velar bunched approximant

Voiced velar bunched approximant
ɹ̈
Encoding
X-SAMPA	r\_"

Some languages have a velar approximant that is produced with the body of the tongue bunched up at the velum and simultaneous pharyngealization. This gives rise to a type of retroflex resonance resembling [ɻ].^[19] The extension to the IPA recommends the use of the "centralized" diacritic combined with the IPA sign for the English alveolar approximant (as in ⟨ɹ̈⟩) to distinguish the bunched realization from the prototypical apical [ɹ], which may be specified as ⟨ɹ̺⟩. Typically, the diacritic is omitted, so that the sound is transcribed simply with ⟨ɹ⟩ or ⟨ɻ⟩ (in broader transcriptions: ⟨r⟩), as if it were a coronal consonant.

In Dutch, this type of r is called Gooise r [ˌɣoːisə ˈʔɛr] 'Gooi r'. It is named after het Gooi, a region of the Netherlands where Hilversum (the main centre for television and radio broadcasting) is located.

Features

Features of the voiced velar bunched approximant:

• Its manner of articulation is approximant, which means it is produced by narrowing the vocal tract at the place of articulation, but not enough to produce a turbulent airstream. The body of the tongue is bunched up at the velum, rather than just approaching it as it is the case with the prototypical velar approximant.
• Its place of articulation is velar, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the soft palate.
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Dutch	Randstad varieties[19]	maar	[ˈmaːɹ̈]	'but'	Pre-velar. Common allophone of /r/ in the syllable coda, where it contrasts with [w]. The bunching and pharyngealization may be lost in connected speech, resulting in a semivowel such as [j] or [ə̯].[20] See Dutch phonology
	Standard Northern[19]				Pre-velar. Common allophone of /r/ in the syllable coda, where it contrasts with [w].[19] See Dutch phonology
English	American[21]	red	[ɹ̈ʷɛd]	'red'	Possible realization of /r/; indistinguishable from apical [ɹ̺].[21] See Pronunciation of English /r/
	Received Pronunciation[21]	curious	[ˈkj̊ʊːɹ̈iəs]	'curious'	Possible allophone of /r/ before front vowels; indistinguishable from apical [ɹ̺].[21] See Pronunciation of English /r/

Relation with [ɡ] and [ɣ]

Some languages have a voiced velar approximant that is unspecified for rounding, and therefore cannot be considered the semivocalic equivalent of either [ɯ] or its rounded counterpart [u]. Examples of such languages are Catalan, Galician and Spanish, in which the approximant consonant (not semivowel) unspecified for rounding appears as an allophone of /ɡ/.^[8]

Eugenio Martínez Celdrán describes the voiced velar approximant consonant as follows:^[22]

As for the symbol ⟨ɰ⟩, it is quite evidently inappropriate for representing the Spanish voiced velar approximant consonant. Many authors have pointed out the fact that [ɰ] is not rounded; for example, Pullum & Ladusaw (1986:98) state that 'the sound in question can be described as a semi-vowel (glide) with the properties "high", "back", and "unrounded"'. They even establish an interesting parallelism: 'the sound can be regarded as an unrounded [w]'. It is evident, then, that ⟨ɰ⟩ is not an adequate symbol for Spanish. First of all, because it has never been taken into consideration that there is a diphthong in words like paga 'pay', vago 'lazy', lego 'lay', etc., and, secondly, because this sound is rounded when it precedes rounded vowels. Besides, it would be utterly wrong to transcribe the word jugo 'juice' with ⟨ɰ⟩ *[ˈχuɰo], because the pronunciation of that consonant between two rounded vowels is completely rounded whereas [ɰ] is not. [...]

The symbol I have always proposed is ⟨ɣ̞⟩, the correlate to the other central approximants in Spanish, [β̞ ð̞] (Martínez Celdrán 1991, 1996:47). This coincides with Ball & Rahilly (1999:90), whose example for the three approximants is the Spanish word abogado 'lawyer'[...]. Ball & Rahilly too criticise in a footnote the confusion between these symbols: 'The difference between an approximant version of the voiced velar fricative [ɣ], and the velar semi-vowel [ɰ] is that the latter requires spread lips, and must have a slightly more open articulatory channel so that it becomes [ɯ] if prolonged' (p. 189, fn. 1).

There is a parallel problem with transcribing the palatal approximant.

The symbol ⟨ɣ̞⟩ may not display properly in all browsers. In that case, ⟨ɣ˕⟩ should be substituted. In broader transcriptions,^[23] the lowering diacritic may be omitted altogether, so that the symbol is rendered ⟨ɣ⟩, i.e. as if it represented the corresponding fricative.

See also

• Index of phonetics articles